Exit Victoria

It was enough to make a decent Irishman gag. There she sat, "the ould bitch," on the lawn of Leinster House itself, right in front of the main entrance to the Dail; and there she had been sitting for 41 years. Even worse than the statue of Victoria was the tablet underneath, inscribed from the old Queen's loyal "Irish subjects."

In the Dail last week, up stood fiery young Deputy Con Lehane of Dublin. He asked Prime Minister John A. Costello if he was aware how the nation felt about having a "foreign monarch" on the Leinster House lawn. Costello made a careful reply: the statue would soon be removed; the deputies needed more room to park their cars. It was anticipated, he said, that the removal would begin this month.*

It was about time; but some Irishmen would be sorry, in a way. Said one of the deputies last week passing the oxidized Victoria (on which not a penny of public money was ever spent for cleaning): "We were getting quite used to her. And we liked her a lot better since she turned green."

*Rumanians beat the Irish to the crowbars last week by removing from Bucharest's Square of the Republic (formerly Royal Palace Square) the statue of Victoria's contemporary, Carol I.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.